The present invention concerns the field of the emulation of contactless payment cards and more particularly the routing of contactless communication within a device comprising several contactless payment card emulation circuits.
Bank cards that can be used for payment in shops are composed of a chip card component hosting the bank applications. This component has a high level of security and for this reason is called a secure element or SE.
When such a card is used for a payment, it is inserted into a reader of a payment terminal. A connection is established then between the payment terminal and the SE in order to make the payment. The connection is a physical connection using the physical connectors of the SE.
Contactless payment is developing. It is based on the use at the time of payment of a so-called contactless payment card that typically combines firstly the SE of a conventional payment card and a near field communication (NFC) label. The payment terminal is then equipped with an NFC label reader. The function is then the same as for a conventional payment card, the physical connection being replaced by the near field radio connection of the NFC type.
Users are more and more being equipped with mobile terminals such as mobile telephones, digital assistants or portable computers. More and more of these terminals are provided with near field radio communication interfaces. These terminals are then used to make a contactless payment. It suffices to provide these terminals with a secure element similar to that equipping contactless payment cards to enable the mobile terminal to be used in a contactless payment card emulation mode. In this contactless card emulation mode, communication between the payment terminal and the secure element is directly made via the NFC controller of the device without being controlled by the processor of the mobile terminal and the operating system thereof. This is an obligation for security reasons in particular, since a corrupted system must not be in a position to have an influence on the secure communication between the payment terminal and the secure element.
Several solutions for the implementation of secure elements are possible. The secure element may be implemented within the subscriber card or SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card in case the mobile terminal is a mobile telephone, or a secure SIM card. It may also be implemented in the form of a component of the mother board of the mobile terminal, or within an additional board, for example an SD (Secure Digital) board. It could also be a case of a payment card, for example connected suitably to the terminal. Any one terminal may even comprise several different secure elements able to communicate with a payment terminal through the near-field radio interface.
In such a terminal there is a problem of routing the communications to the correct secure element.